


you left with your head filled with flames

by theherocomplex



Series: where some holy spectacle lies [2]
Category: Horizon: Zero Dawn (Video Game)
Genre: Character Study, F/M, Pining, Pre-Romance, Second Person
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-04
Updated: 2018-02-04
Packaged: 2019-03-13 08:22:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,352
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13566624
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theherocomplex/pseuds/theherocomplex
Summary: What it comes down to, you realize, is fear.





	you left with your head filled with flames

**Author's Note:**

> From the "lost words" prompt on Tumblr. 
> 
> **Senticous: prickly; thorny.**
> 
> Note: This could be read as a companion fic to [those wings in your spine](https://archiveofourown.org/works/13197231), but you don’t need to read that for this to make sense.
> 
> Warnings for some violence/body horror, and mentions of death (human and animal, nothing graphic).
> 
> Title from [this song](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=21exnGWN-uI).

You wait out a winter storm in yet another set of ruins, and while the world is buried in snow drifts half again as tall as you are, you manage to wake ARTEMIS from its long sleep.

Half-wake, really. Without GAIA, you’re lucky to get anything out of the subordinate functions, but you’ve been riding the thin grey edge of hope for so long that even this shred of life is cause for celebration.

(It’d be better if there were someone to celebrate with, and even you know this, Aloy, the Seeker, the forever-wanderer; joy is meant to be shared, not because it’s too heavy but because it’s too fragile to live on its own.)

Still, you grin and punch the air when the AI core lights up and an interface blooms before you. ARTEMIS, the interface whispers through your Focus, was an ancient goddess of the hunt, and she – impossible to think of the AI as  _it,_ now – is responsible for the strange and wild life that should have filled your world.

Do you remember, Aloy, when you first thought your world teeming with life? The boars, the foxes, the dragonflies darting in bright shimmers over the water – everywhere you looked, there was life, in endless abundance.

How wrong, how young you were.

You parcel out your time with the database, even though your hands cramp with the need to know. There’s so much you could bring back, so much more life to set free – but ARTEMIS is weak, and one misstep now could mean disaster.

Take your time, Aloy. They’ve waited this long to be born. They can wait a little longer.

You start with the birds, and mouth the unfamiliar names as a riot of colored feathers and song fills the room around you.  _Cardinal. Cedar Waxwing. Heron. Loon. Sandpiper. Shrike._

The last one catches your eye, so you open the full entry, and feel your mouth go dry. The shrike, you read, would impale its prey – insects, mice,  _other_   _birds_   _–_ on thorns, or spikes, and then tear them apart.

It’s not cruelty, you tell yourself, as you close the window and turn off your Focus. It’s just the way of the world. Only humans are cruel by choice.

It’s still a long time before you sleep.

***

You dream.

In them, you die, over and over again: Helis’ hand on your throat, his blade in your belly, smiling as he pins you to the ground. You struggle, you scream, but what comes out of your mouth isn’t a voice but the vicious shriek of a Glinthawk.

 _That’s right_ , Helis tells you, smiling ever wider. He pulls the blade free, and with his bare hand digs into the hole in your belly. You feels a great shattering beneath your ribs, and then his hand comes free, full of wires and metal, sparks darting fitfully back and forth before dying.  _You’re just another made thing, one that outlived its usefulness. And now, you will be broken._

He crushes your metal heart in his hand, and  _Aloy_  goes out, a candle in a sudden wind, snow gusting off a mountaintop.

You wake up, gasping, feeling under your clothes for a hole you know isn’t there, for a warm flesh heart, but the words rattle on and on in your head:  _you’re just another made thing._

Helis is dead, HADES is broken. Behind you and out of sight, Meridian lives, and the world is green around you. You wait until the dream loosens its hold, then lie back, press your fingers into your chest till they leave bruises. Outside and above you, the stars wheel on, their old names forgotten. You breathe slowly in the dark until you stop tasting iron and it feels safe to close your eyes.

***

There’s another dream, but it comes so rarely you only remember snatches of it on waking. It’s after the battle, when you stood among the green, rustling leaves and whispered,  _I’m alive, I’m alive, we did it_ , to yourself. But this time, Varl doesn’t appear, and the city is empty. It’s just you on the rise, alone, and far below is Erend, shielding his eyes from the sun, calling your name.

You want to go to him, but there’s no way down. No ledges, no ladders, just a wall of thorns, and a thousand small creatures dying upon them. You can only climb up, toward the cold Spire as it pierces the sky.

If you called to him, Aloy, what would your voice sound like?

The dream makes it hard to think of him — no, it makes it  _hurt_  to think of him, your chest coiled so tight around the pang it might burst, so you don’t, until you come back to Meridian and he’s there, with the same awful jokes, the same bright smile.

“I got a priest waiting, you know,” he tells you. “Any time you’re ready.”

It’s just a joke, you tell yourself, as you let the question roll off your back. Even so, every time you dream of him, you look for a safe way down.

***

Erend’s careful not to get drunk around you, not that he’s ever pointed it out. He just…doesn’t, and while the fumes may cling to his clothes, his breath is clean, his eyes clear. You’re not sure how you feel about that — you’re  _glad_  he’s drinking less, mostly because he couldn’t really drink  _more_  — but feeling like he’s trying to prove something to you by doing it makes your back tight. If he’s going to do this for anyone besides himself, it should be for Ersa, shouldn’t it?

You’re in Meridian unexpectedly on a spring night after your Strider overloads during a brief but vicious sandstorm. So you wander the city, looking for a familiar face to pass the time until the next herd of something rideable comes by, and run into Erend.

A very, very drunk Erend.

Your path took you by the alehouse accidentally; you never have reason to come here, so you’re not sure why your feet steered you this way, and you’re about to turn around when someone lumbers out the door, roaring. Then the someone catches sight of you, and staggers forward, one arm raised in your direction.

Instinct takes over. When someone sounds like that, there’s blood in the not-too-distant future, and it’s good to have a spear in your hand if you can’t get out of sight fast enough. You’ve handled more than your share of fools who decided to test a woman traveling alone, and are ready to put this one down just like all the others when he passes into the light.

“Erend.” You lowers your spear, fighting not to turn your heel and leave when Erend gets in arms-reach, reeking of old ale and stale sweat. You’ve never seen him like this, hair matted by sweat, food spilled down his chest plate and crusted in his beard. It’s a fight not to show your disgust on her face.

Not that you think Erend can actually  _see_  your face, given how he can’t seem to focus on you at all.

“ _Aloy_.” He must think he’s whispering, but it comes out as a hoarse shout. “You’re — you’re  _here,_ heh, and  _’m_  here, and —” He weaves on his feet, then falls against a pillar. “’S a good night, with you here.”

Oh, no.  _No_. Not like this. You back away, your hands up, warding off whatever’s coming next. “You need to get home, Erend,” you say, still backing away. “Looks like you’ve had a long night.”

This is a thousand times worse than when he met you drunk at the gates. You could understand that — if you could have drunk your way through the worst days after losing Rost, you probably would have — but this, the soppy way he’s looking up at you, and the  _smell_  —

You want to be anywhere but here,  _anywhere_ , so long as you don’t have to see this.

Erend gives himself a hard shake and clears his throat. You take another step away in case it’s a prelude to vomit, but when he looks back up at you, there’s an unexpected clarity in his eyes.

It quickly gives way to horror, then shame, and then a sullen kind of resignation. On a face that you’re used to see smiling, and laughing — a face that seems  _made_  for both those things — the changes make you nauseous.

“You shouldn’t —” He swallows, a thick, heavy sound. “Shouldn’t be here. Shouldn’t see this. Dammit, shouldn’t —” He pushes off the pillar and wheels away, toward the dark street. “Sorry,” he says, without turning around. “This isn't…isn’t how I wanted —”

And that’s when Erend trips over a loose stone and goes sprawling facedown in the street. It would have been hilarious, you decide, if he hadn’t just laid there for a few seconds, like the weight of his shame had pinned him to the ground, the way Sawtooths take down unwary hunters. The way a shrike pins its meal.

In an instant, your disgust turns to pity, and uncertain, wry affection. “Hey,” you say, stepping closer, pitching your voice so only Erend can hear. “Let me walk you home, all right? Just this once.”

Erend’s back on his feet before you’re done asking, still unsteady but obviously trying to stay upright on his own. “’S fine,” he says. “I’ll be fine. Night, Aloy.”

“Oh, I  _insist_.” You slip neatly under his arm and sling it over your shoulders. He  _stinks_ up close, and he’s so heavy in all his armor you’re now the one staggering, but you manage to steer him home without disaster. He stops apologizing after the first ten paces — a lucky thing, because if you have to hear him slurring  _sorry, sorry_  one more time, you’ll throw him over the city wall.

Erend’s house isn’t quite what you expected. Of course there’s armor everywhere, in various stages of repair, and a pile of misshapen metal in one corner, but the floor is swept clean, and the dozen or so empty ale bottles are arranged in a neat wedge on the floor.

“Cozy,” you tell him. Erend’s head lolls against yours, but he doesn’t reply. “All right, Captain, let’s get you to bed.” He sighs in your face. “Eucch. Right. So attractive, Erend.”

He lets you manhandle him up the stairs and onto his bed, and then sighs through you puzzling out how to take off the largest bits of armor. What’s with the Oseram and their obsession with  _buckles_ , honestly?

“There,” you say, tugging off his boots and finally escaping the stench-cloud — yes, you know that’s uncalled for, but you just dragged the man up two flights of stairs in full armor — hanging all around him. You shove him onto his side, and prop him up against the wall with a pillow against his belly. “Well, I don’t think you’ll die in your sleep…just as long as you don’t try to go down the stairs until you’re seeing straight.”

Erend begins to snore lightly. It’s actually not a horrible sound, just a warm, human one.

You hate Erend’s drinking. You’d tear it out with your nails and teeth if you could, then skewer it on the ground, but he’d have to want that — and he doesn’t. Not yet, and maybe never.  

Is the drinking a kind of armor, or slow suicide? Or is it just the thorn he twists on, the way love is yours?

“If you think I’m ever doing this again,” you tell him, fists clenched, “you  _deserve_  to fall down the stairs.”

Erend’s mouth falls open a little, his face falling into slack, unworried lines. He looks as young as you do — but then, you’re not as young as you were. The miles are long, and they show up in strange ways. But he looks so peaceful you can almost imagine that he’s not falling-down drunk, and that you just happened on him napping when you came home after a long journey.

Oh, that’s dangerous, thinking of him as home. You don’t, can’t, have that, not while the work’s undone. By this time tomorrow, you’ll have left Meridian far behind, again, and Erend won’t remember this at all.

You have no excuse for what you do next. You’re just so tired of  _wanting_ , and he’d forgive you for this, the same way you’ll forgive him for this last hour.

So you kneel next to the bed, close enough to see the line of his teeth behind his lips, and touch his throat with just the tips of your fingers, where his pulse jumps under his skin. A shock runs up your arm, startling you so badly you almost fall on your rear. How long has it  _been_ , since you touched anyone?

Long enough that you’re shaking now, your fingertips poised just above his ear.

“Be safe,” you tell him, because you always do. Then you run one finger along the line of his jaw, a little afraid of the force of your longing. “Please. I’ll be back.”

Erend sighs, eyes moving slowly under their lids. You back away slowly, not wanting to wake him, and then slip out into the cool night, your fingertips buzzing.

***

What it comes down to, you realize, is fear. A far more slippery version than you’ve encountered before, but fear nonetheless. You’ve faced down cultists with their Deathbringers spitting bits of metal hate at you, you’ve stood your ground in the path of a Bellowback’s charge. No matter what else they say about you (and they say a great deal, Aloy, your name is like wine in the mouths of half the world, and poison in all the rest), no one can claim you’re afraid of death.

You fear  _loss_. Rost’s last and darkest lesson.

Not for yourself; if you die, well, the world will go on without you. It will take time, but someone — someone you hope  _isn’t_  Sylens — will come along to finish what you started.

(What you  _continued_ , you think, in your more waspish moments.)

The world won’t stop. Meridian may crumble, the walls of the Embrace may be shattered in war, and the Banuk may fall, one by one, in the hunt, but the world will keep blooming, keep breathing. And so you refuse to fear death, because it would only be the end for you.

But  _loss_.

You loved Rost. He died. Vala smiled at you and when you won the Proving she was  _glad_ , she was  _laughing_ , so you loved her, too. She died. Even Bast — spiteful little Bast — didn’t hesitate when you needed his help, and you loved him a little for that. And he died.

They all die. Your name may be a song or curse, depending on who’s speaking, but your love is a blade that never dulls, an arrow that always flies true. If you love someone, they will die.

So you keep your distance, inviolate, your solitude not just efficient but compassionate. You move faster on your own.

***

You’re in the square, picking through a plate of over-spiced ( _over-priced,_ you think) boar and peppers while Erend methodically makes his way through his second helping of the same. It’s just before mid-morning, and though the haggling is almost at its loudest pitch, it’s easy to focus on his voice, the way his arm twists when he cuts his meat, and ignore the rest.

Later, you try to remember what he said that made your stomach drop so, and the blood drain from your face, but all you recall are the last words of a sentence:  _…maybe like Rost._

You set down your knife.

Erend looks up from his food. “What?”

“Rost already  _had_  a daughter,” you say, because if you carry this within you any longer you’re going to tear yourself open with just your nails and teeth. “Her name was Alana. She was…she died. So did his wife. I was just…a replacement.” You stare down at your hands, the scars beaded across your knuckles, and can’t say anything else for a long moment.

Erend starts to reach out — slowly, so you have time to back away, and you’re abruptly furious with him, for always being so patient, so  _careful_ , like you’re something fragile.

 _Or someone that matters_ , comes a totally unwanted thought. You pull away.

“I don’t know why it was such a shock,” you hear yourself saying in a thin, dry voice you barely recognize. You’re tired of the truth being a series of slow cuts. “I started out as a replacement for — for Elisabet. Why not be one for Rost, too?”

“ _Aloy_.” Erend leans across the table, more intent than you’ve ever seen him outside of the search for Ersa. He has the edge of the table in a white-knuckle grip, and at first you think he’s had too much to drink — as usual — and is just trying to keep his balance, but then you remember: he ordered the food, and the tea with it. He hasn’t had a drop all night. Judging by the clarity in his gaze, his clean breath — he hasn’t had one in a while.

Whatever he’s about to say, he means it. And now you’re wrong-footed, knocked off-center by this intense, clear-eyed man, who holds your gaze without flinching — and without pity.

“I never met him,” Erend says, “and I get it, you haven’t wanted to talk about him. I’m not going to push, it’s not my place. But what you  _have_  said — Rost  _loved_  you.  _You_. Not because of what he didn’t have or why you were born.” His throat works as he swallows. “Just you.”

He smells like road dust and sweat, like oiled leather and the strange powder the Carja use on their spears. You’ve never see him like this before, and you’re ashamed of yourself, for whining like a child when Erend has finally, finally grown up.

In the space between breathing in and breathing out, you let yourself imagine what it would feel like to reach out and touch his cheek. You remember with agonizing clarity how his skin felt the night you dragged him home, when you allowed yourself that one furtive touch — but then you exhale, and you just smile.

“Thank you,” you say.

Erend grins back, and reaches for the tea jug. “Hey, sometimes I get it right. Just don’t go depending on it, okay?”

You laugh, and something inside you unclenches. More and more, being near Erend is like an old knot coming undone beneath your ribs. Look at you, giving up half a day’s traveling time just to share a meal with him.

The thought threatens to slip toward deeper waters, so you brush your hands on your trousers and see, out of the corner of your eye, his smile slip a few notches. He knows what’s coming and you watch him not quite harden, but steady himself, for your goodbye.

One of these days, Aloy, he’s going to ask you to stay. It’s a matter of time. What scares you more: that he’s going to ask, or that you might say yes?

“Where to this time?” Erend asks, as he pushes his plate away.

The thorn pierces you again. Pain never grows familiar. “North. North this time.”

Erend nods, still so clearly armored against watching you leave, and tells you to be safe. He always does.

Then he hauls out the old joke —  _so, Aloy, the priest’ll give me a discount if we get hitched by noon_. You roll your eyes and pay for your meal, and keep yourself to just one touch, one, on the curve of his elbow. And if you linger for an extra second, as long as you’re the only one who knows, what’s the harm?

***

Helis spits blood between his teeth and grins at you.  _A made thing. Made for sorrow, made for grief. You are a curse made flesh._

You cry out, and now yours is the voice of something small and weak, something driven from cover to die pierced and drained, to become food for something stronger. Your heart, when he tears it from you, is a knot of thorns.

His teeth are metal when he sinks them into your flesh. You scream, and wake alone.

***

The number of people in Meridian who know — or care — about what a Nora Seeker can do can be numbered on one hand. Here, they care that you’re Thrush to Sunhawk Talanah, that the Sun-King smiles when you pass into his sight and that he trusts you with his life. They care that you brought Itamen and Nasadi home. They care that you brought justice to Ersa.

You saved their city. To them, you’ve never been an outcast, or an echo. You’ve always been Aloy, complete unto yourself.

To Erend, you’ve always meant hope.

“It sounds like you’re talking about someone else,” you tell him, when he’s done with the latest batch of flattery and terrible flirting. You can barely meet his eyes. “I know I did all of these things, but at the time —”

“At the time you were too busy trying not to die?” He smirks when you glance at him sidelong. “Trust me. As someone who was there? It was all you. We’re still standing because of you.”

The sick skin-urge washes over you in a blinding wave. He’s so close you can feel the warmth of his body, the heavy wall of his presence, and if you reached out for his hand, his bones would feel like iron against your fingers. He’s bedrock, as immovable as a boulder. You could rest against him, for a little while.

You clench your fists till your nails bite your skin, and when a runner calls Erend to the Sun-King’s throne, you hide down by the cisterns until the heat bleeds out of your skin and you can pretend you’re whole, and don’t want for anything.

***

How long, Aloy, do you think those trapped birds and mice struggled, once the shrike impaled them on the thorns?

***

Erend touches you once, the night before you make your way back to GAIA Prime. You’ve allowed yourself one touch, just on his shoulder — any more and you’ll do something you’ll regret — and while you linger he reaches up and grasps your hand.

The longing nearly pulls you under. He’s going to ask you to stay, and you’re so tired you feel it through your bones. How long has it been since your dreams showed you a beating heart?

You’re going to say yes. The thought terrifies you.

“Be safe,” he says instead, without looking at you.

He understands so well, Aloy. He will never try to keep you here, never try to pin you down. Erend will never ask for more than you want to give.

When you come back, you’ll tell him. So you think, as you ride away without risking a backwards look at Meridian.

***

You’re gone for three years.

***

Halfway through the second year, you stop dreaming of Erend. Or maybe you still do dream of him, and you just forget as soon as you wake.

That’s worse, you decide, than if you just stopped dreaming of him altogether. It’s one thing if the dreams are gone, it’s another for them to be just out of reach.

***

The irony doesn’t escape you; after all those years of searching for Elisabet — because that’s what you’ve been doing, since you were old enough to understand just what was missing, what made you  _outcast_  — you almost hate the woman, just for leaving such a steep path to follow. You might have saved the world, but Elisabet had already saved it first, and you were only born to fix her great work.

In the end, you think, you’re no better than ARTEMIS, or HADES. You’re just a subordinate part, and Elisabet is the architect of the greater whole.

Not just a made thing, then, but a lesser echo, a song with half its verses missing.

But you’re the best the world’s got, so you keep walking. Alone, and ever-farther from Meridian.

***

It takes you three years of wandering, your voice gathering dust in your throat while you work toward resurrection, for you to understand: desire is no sin, loneliness is not armor, and love is not a thorn upon which you twist, slowly dying.

Love is a bulwark.

Elisabet knew it, and so did the countless dead who endured, and who, through you, are victorious at last.

Rost knew it. Talanah knows it. She will never abandon her Thrush. Varl knows it. You are more than the Anointed, you are a dear friend, and his spear is forever yours.

Avad, Vanasha, Elida. Sona, Teersa, Teb.

Erend.

(It hasn’t surprised you in years that his name comes last, comes brightest.)

There is no god in your dreams. There is no All-Mother. You have never prayed. But, in the warm fastness of your heart, you speak their names. You love them.

You may still lose them, Aloy, but to wander alone, to refuse to let yourself want — you already have.

***

The world is not consciously cruel, but people are, and you have made yourself suffer for too long without cause. Take the thorn from your heart and go home, Aloy. 

The shrike’s time will come again. To everything, as the ancient song goes, there is a season. Let this one be yours.

***

Helis comes to you in dreams, for the last time.  _A made thing_.  _Nothing more._

 _I know_ , you scream back in your own voice, as your metal heart turns to flesh in his hand. You’re burning and singing, all at once.  _We all are. You, me, all of us. But you didn’t kill me. I’m still here. Still here._

Then you wake up, alone, your heart still beating, still alive. Your heart, Aloy, no one else’s. You were made, but so was the world. Find comfort in that, and remember: Helis did not win, HADES is broken, and Erend will be in Meridian when you, battered but unbowed, at last make your way back home.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! Come talk to me on [Tumblr!](http://theherocomplex.tumblr.com) <3


End file.
